


Fortune Telling

by TreacleTeacups



Series: Drabbles n Oneshots [8]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Divination, Fortune Telling, M/M, Persephone AU??, Resurrection, a different form of, that 'drunk girls in night club bathrooms are oracles' turned into a prompt i guess, the words of the prophet are written on the subway wall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28493280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreacleTeacups/pseuds/TreacleTeacups
Summary: In which Trelawny’s a hack, but Harry knows how to Divine when he needs to.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Series: Drabbles n Oneshots [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859008
Comments: 23
Kudos: 305





	Fortune Telling

**_Harry wakes at midnight_**.

It’s cold, bitterly cold, but the weather is conducive to what he needs. He climbs out of bed, pulls on his jeans and a thick overcoat, and throws floo powder into his flickering fireplace. Whispering his destination and stepping into the verdant flames, Harry disappears into the night.

Warsaw nightlife is different from British nightlife, and yet it holds its own. It’s headier, more frantic, there’s an edge of simmering forbidding that never quite climaxes. Boys drink like they want to drown and girls drink like they want to forget. The music is loud, pumping, overtaking the beat of his heart and the scent of sweat burning his sinuses.

Harry has been here before, just once. He rarely goes to the same place twice, but he gets the feeling that he’ll get what he needs.

Harry stumbles through the throngs of writhing bodies, eyes downcast to avoid the strobing lights and the sweaty faces of the young and the wild. He makes it to the bar and orders by pointing; there’s no need to shout, the bartender wouldn’t be able to hear him over the thumping music anyway. Harry pays for his overpriced shot with a large note and downs it in one go.

Turning to watch the writhing crowds, Harry scans the scene. There is only an hour’s difference between Warsaw and London, but the effect the hour has on the nightlife is extraordinary. It is perfect timing. It is nearly two in the morning and the crowds are catastrophically wasted.

Harry approaches the bathrooms and goes into the men’s restroom. He washes his hands, in the mirror sees a couple kissing in the corner of the room, exits the restrooms. Outside the bathroom, in the long, dark hallway lit only by the flashing of the lasers on the dance floor, there’s a young woman leaning against the wall. Her blonde hair is an utter mess, her mascara running and lipstick just a faint smudge of ruby red. She’s dazed, eyes disconnected as she looks beyond the nightclub. Her breath reeks of vodka and there’s a tinted glaze to her pupils, as if she is in a world very far away.

Harry watches the young woman for a moment. She is breathlessly free, quietly swaying to the music. Men and women filter by her, unseeing. She must have been here for a while. She looks like she’s going to stay for another while yet. She is part of the décor, blending in with the graffitied walls and sticky floor and glowing nightlights.

The young woman’s mouth moves and Harry approaches, leaning against the wall by her side. He tilts his head toward her, not overtly so, but just enough to hear what she says.

“ _Marzy o tobie_ ,” she says, slurring. She isn’t looking at Harry. She is staring at the wall opposite her, where a stick figure has been crudely carved into the wall. “ _Znajdź go w sadzie_.”

Harry nods and passes her a vial. She takes it, confused, never once looking at Harry but examining the vial as if it is some great gift. It’s hangover potion, not that the young muggle woman knows it, but she looks ragged and rough enough to consume a vial of potion without knowing the contents.

Harry has gotten what he needs, so he leaves the young woman behind to her antics and he vacates the nightclub.

There’s a burning energy in the wind, cold tension borne from the snowdrift slowly coating downtown Warsaw with white flakes. Harry knows there’s more stops he needs to make.

Turning to check that no one is paying attention to him, Harry sees that the streets are full but with drunk persons who wouldn’t know apparition if it literally happened before their very eyes. Turning his head downward, Harry focuses on France, wondering if he’ll be able to apparate so far.

With an ear-splitting _crack,_ Harry appears in Paris. There’s a faint noise of live music in the background, something acoustic and nostalgic. Harry goes down a set of stairs into an underground venue. There’s smoke filtering through the air, the music gets louder, there’s people sipping expensive spirits and sending one another heavy, heady stares.

Harry sits at the bar, listens to the music, watches the people flit back and forth. It’s a stark contrast to the club in Warsaw. Harry knows that there are venues like this in Warsaw, and venues like the Warsaw club in Paris. But it does not have anything to do with the establishment, and everything to do with the people.

A woman sips a glass of red wine and raises an eyebrow at Harry, lips quirking in interest. Harry shakes his head softly, self-depreciating in a soft way, and she shrugs. The woman slinks away from the bar and approaches a man, hand curling suggestively into his lapels.

Harry glances at the woman’s wine glass. There are sediments coating the glass, the tannin dredges of a fine cabernet, and they sit at the bottom in a strange formation. Harry stares at the wine glass for a moment, committing the sight to memory, and then he leaves.

* * *

Harry trots down filthy stairs into the New York subway. He pays for a ticket and sits quietly on the first train of the morning, or the last of the evening - he can't be sure anymore. As the station flashes past the carriage, fluorescent light strobing in the windows, Harry rests his eyes. It’s been a long morning, but he’ll be done soon.

“This will be your stop,” an old man tells Harry.

Harry opens his eyes and looks at the old man sitting at the end of the carriage. He is haggard, a long beard unwashed in living memory, eyes sunken and skin wrinkled. He smells of piss and beer and body odour. But he is giving Harry a clear-eyed stare, a look of consideration on his ancient features.

Harry nods his thanks and disembarks when the carriage finally comes to a juddering halt.

There’s graffiti on the back wall of the small station, the scent of freshly applied spray paint burning his lungs. Harry looks at the words. They aren’t particularly interesting, nor is the font steady or even attractive. But the meaning is what Harry is here for, not the effort.

_Eve bit the apple and saw God. For being curious, she was kicked out of the Garden. How fucking rude is that?_

In a few short hours, the words will be gone. There words have religious connotations, so officials will quickly cover it up, if the other graffiti taggers don’t get to it first.

Harry turns on his heel and disapparates.

* * *

There’s one final stop.

Harry hasn’t been here in a while. Scratch that – Harry hasn’t been here in twenty years. Two decades. An eon. A lifetime.

The field outside of Hogwarts was long ago turned into an orchard, spilt blood and wayward curses drenching the magical soil. An orchard was planted, if only to cleanse the soil of its death. A purification, in the form of a fruit garden.

Harry finds the tree easily. It is a distorted thing, in the shape of wine sediments at the bottom of a Parisian whore’s glass. It is distinctive.

Unlike the other apple trees, this one thrums with power. Harry knows it is hidden from the others, hidden from sight by the students who laugh and run through these fields. It reeks of power, of Yggdrasil, the tree of life, of Hera’s immortal apple tree, of Siddhartha’s fig tree of enlightenment.

It is what Harry has been looking for, but he hasn’t known until the moment he sees it.

 _I have dreamt of you. Find him in the orchard._ The Polish Oracle was right.

 _Curious,_ the graffiti said. _How fucking rude._

Harry found the only apple in the tree, a ripe, ruby red fruit just within his reach for plucking.

There are rules, in wizarding culture. Rumours and myths. Of Hera’s apples and Eve’s fruit of knowledge and Persephone’s pomegranate of entrapment. Of Aphrodite’s pear and the fae’s peach and the Buddha’s fig.

Never take fruit given by the goddesses and gods.

Harry plucks the fruit from the tree and takes a bite.

“That was very foolish,” a young man warns, tone warmed with humour.

Harry turns on his heel, looks up, clashing eyes with the stormy grey of a long-dead man.

“I’ve waited a long time,” Tom says, a smirk slanting his lips, eyes dark.

Harry watches Tom slip out of the tree, as solid and alive as anything Harry has ever seen.

“Did you miss me?” Tom asks, prowling close.

“Every moment,” Harry replies dryly, eyebrow arched. He speaks with sarcasm, but a hole in his soul is filled for the first time in twenty years.

_Find him in the orchard. This will be your stop. Curious. How fucking rude._

_Neither can live while the other survives._

Tom pulls Harry into his arms, eyes burning with fevered victory, as Harry lets a prophecy come true.


End file.
